Wonderful Waterfront Town

We tend to clump together some of our bucket list activities, sometimes on purpose and other time just by chance. It happened to be a little bit of both when we visited a lighthouse which so happened to be in a city we've never been to, which just so happened to be the same city our friends live in. (We'd go straight to our friends' house and never pass through the town).

Living in Michigan leaves us with many lighthouses to visit (we love the Great Lakes), but we were looking for one that would be relatively close by. Turns out that approximately 20 minutes up the road is the Peche Island lighthouse, who knew! Peche Island Lighthouse was established in 1908. It was originally displayed at Peche Island near Belle Isle. In the 1980's the lighthouse was nearly collapsed and was rescued by the Coast Guard and taken to Marine City where it stands (60' tall) inactive on the banks of the St. Clair River


 Where we found parking was a short walk for the lighthouse, but ended up being right across the street from a school our old varsity team played their tournament games at. We had been parked in the same parking lot a little over a year earlier and had no idea that we were less than a couple blocks from a really cool little town.

 

We walked the boardwalk to the Peche Lighthouse and took many pictures along the way. Then kept right on walking straight into town that had many antique store and little shops. We happened upon a candy store that had just about every kind of candy you could think of, including chocolate cover bacon! Jordan took a spin of chance on a Jelly Belly game where you picked a candy that matched the picture the pointer landed on. Sounds like fun, right. Where is the chance in that, you may ask? Well not all the flavors are pleasant. Jordan landed on a white bean with yellow dots, there were two flavors you could pick butter popcorn or rotten eggs! You have no way of knowing which flavor you grabbed until you put it in your mouth. Poor Jordan and Jacob they picked the rotten egg!!! Lucky for the other two of us, we tasted buttered popcorn (which tasted just like buttered popcorn). We ventured into many little shops while we there, just to look around. The boys got a real kick out of called Earthstar Wisdom. where there was meditation music playing and asked many questions about what crystal healing was all about. They had gone in ahead of me (I stopped to take a picture of the shop on the outside) and I was greeted by all 3 of my boys sitting on the floor in the lotus position. We walk through many antique stores, some of which I walked through with just one kid at a time so I could make sure they didn't accidentally bump into anything breakable. There was a cute little beach tucked away in the corner of town, but we hadn't thought to bring our suits with us.

Is it a museum or a house?

The museum hidden in a neighborhood.

My GPS notified my there was a museum nearby so we set off in search of it. Along our way we found another new playground/park. Actually a friend of our told us that the park was so new that it didn't even have a name yet. The boys played for a bit then we were back to our search for the museum. Sadly when we found the museum it was closed, there was a huge "house" across the street that had a historical sign in front of it so we investigated. It was difficult to tell from outside it was an open to the public house (like the Octagon House) or a real house people were living in that had historical importance. We thought just in case, we better not try the front door. (Later we learned from our friend that people actually live there, but sometimes the host tours of the property.) Being in a new place means there are new places to try for a meal. Well, my kids, being kids, chose McDonald's off all the places!! We rarely eat at fast food places, so to them getting Mickey D's was really special.




Our friend that lives in Marine City seen when I posted it on Facebook that we were in the area invited us over for a visit. It seemed like a great way to conclude on tour of the city. After our lovely meal of burgers and chicken nuggets (only the best for my kiddos...LOL) we stopped to visit. We pulled up just as my friend was filling water balloons for her kids. Knowing that she is a much better pitcher than I, I proposed the idea of playing a bit of water balloon baseball with all 6 kiddos. So we managed to mark that off our list that day too. After everyone took a couple swings in water balloon baseball, we let the kids go at it in a water balloon fight. Then the kids went off playing games and skateboards and such, while we enjoyed catching up.  It was a wonderful way end to a great day in a beautiful city.